Environment Committee on April 19th, 2016

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I'll try to keep this brief. I appreciate the efforts by Mark.

There are two simultaneous things happening here. One is the substance of what I'm trying to get done, which is something that everybody says they want to get done, but as Mark has said has been bumped around and shuffled as we've readjusted our calendar a few times.

The second thing is the way this committee is going to work. We struck a subcommittee and the subcommittee hashes things out. Previous to our last meeting I think the subcommittee had spent about an hour or more even, a fair amount of time working out a schedule that we then presented, and which the committee changed again.

It begs the question of what you asked us as a subcommittee to do. If all we're going to do is bring back our recommendations and you're going to change them again, we just burned an hour of all of our collective work lives to repeat the conversation. We can't keep doing it is my point because it's not effective for the subcommittee's time and I would argue also for the committee's time. Why have one? It's meant to save time, not make more. We've only been making more time and more effort.

I'm not going to vote for the subamendment simply because it allows those two meetings to remain at the end of the committee's calendar. I like Dominic LeBlanc a lot, he likes his summers a lot, and I'm not fully confident that week the House will even sit. Usually it's a rumour.

We haven't had this particular House leader in charge of the calendar before, so we'll see what happens. That gives me great concern because as we heard from the minister today—and I'll end here, Chair, because I don't want to take up time—that her deadline is September 4 according to when the minister made the commitment to bring back a greenhouse gas target for the country. That was six months after the Vancouver agreement.

With this committee not having dipped its toe substantively at all into climate change for those first six, seven, and eight months of Parliament, and it will be 10 months by then, it seems to me counterintuitive simply because it's the name of the ministry, and climate change is pressing.

I'll be voting against the subamendment. I think it simply reverts. I'm voting for the main motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

It's an amendment.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

That's an amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Did anyone else want to say anything before we put it to a vote?

(Amendment agreed to)

Now we will move the amended motion.

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Is there any other business?

Mr. Fast.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

I just want to make sure that my motion about the rotation for questions be considered at our next meeting, if at all possible.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Okay. We'll do that at the end of the next meeting.

Just to be clear, at the next meeting we are going to try to finish and submit our drafting instructions for the sustainable development strategy and act, so come prepared for lots of focused discussion. Then we will make sure we will save time for you to bring that forward.

Mr. Amos.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

I'm wondering if the clerk could update us on any discussions around the use of a Facebook page.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

We can make sure we have that on the record. I think you brought that up at the last meeting.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thanks very much, everybody. That was a great meeting.

The meeting is adjourned.